Hello my friends, and welcome to episode 4-368 the new summer, of the RunRunLive Podcast.

Happy 4th of July to all my patriotic American friends.

Today we have a chat with Julia who has a great story. She had that moment in her life where she almost lost everything that led her to endurance sports. We get some many of these stories and it makes me wonder why people seem to need to get knocked up side of the head to make big changes in their lives? Maybe it’s just that we need to be shown that anything is possible.

I’m dropping this show on June 30th. I am finishing up my 30-day 5 at 5 project where I simply got up and ran 5 miles at 5 AM every morning in the woods. I’ll give you my report out on that in one of the sections.

How are you doing? If you’re an ultra-marathoner you’re in the thick of your summer racing season. Likewise if you’re a triathlete or a biker you may be racing or training for a late summer race. If you’re one of those crazy marathon runners you probably need to start getting serious about your training plans for a fall race.

Such is the cycle of our lives.

I do love this time of year. I know many of you in Europe and in the great sun-beaten swaths of the Western US and in the densely humid jungles of the southern US, have been having some hot, hot, hot weather. But I, up here in New England have had a mild start to summer. We’ve had lots of rain and cooler temps.

The plants are happy and the little animals are thriving.

Buddy the old wonder dog ran my 5 at 5 project with me. I took him for a first loop and then went out again to get my miles. That seems to be a good fit for him and he loves the cooler weather.

How are your gardens doing? Mine was slow to get started due to the cool entrance of summer, but now my tomatoes, squash and cucumbers are coming on. My beans didn’t come up, but I was using seeds from 3-4 years ago, so no surprise really.

My berries are starting to come in and I am going to have a boatload of berries. Like I told you before I’ve got a bevy of apples on my trees as well so we might get some apples this year. How about you?

How’s your running? Your Swimming? Your biking? Your gardening?

What’s your next big race?

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I watched a couple new movies since we last talked. The first one was John Wick 2, which I thought would be just another terrible action movie. I had low expectations. But it was good, for an action movie. They could have mailed it in and just done the typical guy with guns and cars Van Dame, Schwarzenegger, Stalone movie.

But they did more. They put in this Noir affectation that made the character less cartoonish and more likable. They did this thing with the fight scenes that included a lot of judo which was interesting. Not wire fighting like the Matrix or Bruce Lee type, but Olympic wrestling type moves.

And of course, lots of car crashes, explosions a high body count.

The other movie I watched was Trumbo. This is a sort of bio pic with Brian Cranston of Breaking Bad fame playing Dalton Trumbo.

I’ll give you a quick plot summary. Trumbo was one of the most famous, richest screen writes in Hollywood in 1947, but he also was a member of the Communist Party, which wasn’t a bad thing in 1944 when we were friends with Stalin, but was a very bad thing in 1947, as the beginning of the cold war kicked off a red scare.

Some wankers in the congress decided Hollywood was being run by communists and they were 5th columnist set on infecting the population with their commie ideas. They proceeded to create this extra-legal body called the House UnAmerican Activities committee, with subpoena power to weed out the commies.

Now, technically, the constitution says we can believe in anything we want and the government can go suck it. But, in times of hysteria, power hungry politicians always find some boogieman to whip up that allows them to set those rules aside.

The committee subpoenaed 10, mostly screen writers, who became known as ‘the Hollywood 10’ to question. These guys thinking they had rights decided to not answer the questions, and the times being what they were, they went to jail for a couple years for contempt or obstruction or something. Trumbo was one of those.

Meanwhile, at the start of this, Hollywood banded together and tried to turn the tide and tell middle America how ridiculous all this witch hunting was. They totally over estimated their star power and totally misread the sentiment of working class Americans. Joe-sixpack didn’t have any love for these lefty, pinko, coastal elitists and wanted the commies weeded out!

Thus started the blacklist. The studio heads were basically arm twisted into committing to not employ anyone who was on the blacklist. The blacklist did what it was intended to and put people out of work and ruined or even ended their lives.

There is a great series that goes through this in detail that I would highly recommend you listen to before watching Trumbo. It’s on the “You must Remember This” podcast by Karina Longworth. She did a whole season on the blacklist.

I won’t belabor the politics in Trumbo. Sometimes when you look back on the blacklist people are incredulous that this happened. It did.

These guys were actually communists, but mostly armchair communists not Stalinist. There was a fair amount of anti-Semitism in this as well.

It’s a good move and knowing the history of the era makes it a better movie. Cranston is great.

The thing I really took away from it, more than the political parallels, was how Trumbo just kept working.

They took his job and made him persona non grata, but he just kept writing. He did what he was good at and eventually Hollywood came back around. He won two Oscars for screenplays that were attributed to other writers, in one case a made up name.

That’s the lesson here for me. Just keep your fire burning. Keep using your gift. Keep doing what you’re good at and the rest doesn’t really matter, does it?

On with the show!

…

I’ll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported. What does that mean? It means you don’t have to listen to yet another Blue Apron or Hello Fresh ad. As a matter of fact, stop being lazy and go shop for your own food. We do have a membership option where you can become a member and as a special thank you, you will get access to member’s only audio.

I’ll also remind you that I have started raising money for team Hoyt for my 2017 Boston Marathon. I would appreciate any help you can give. The fundraiser is on Crowdrise (so I don’t have to touch any of the money) it goes straight to the Hoyts and supports acquiring equipment and supporting others who want to participate like the Hoyts do.

I love pacing races and talking to people about running and one on one i'm okay but having to give a speech in front of an audience is too scary for me to even think about.

again, i'm so very honored to have been chose to be a guest on your show.

thank you for allowing me to share my story. if i can inspire one person, one person to push their limits and leave their comfort zone, then I have done my job.

I read somewhere once that you life should have meaning; so I want to become an inspiration to others so they can try to do more and become more than they are today. the most powerful weapon is the human soul on fire. and if you fire up people to run more, to run faster, to do more, then you are the true inspiration. thank you for your time and i look forward to reading your book.

Outro

OK my friends, have you been proposed to and married during this marathon of episode 4-368 of the RunRunLive Podcast.

Things are cooking. I’m busy. I’m working on a bunch of cool stuff.

One of the startups I’m working with in Boston is this smart garment company I told you about last time. They are going into a testing phase before they launch and are looking for runners so if you’re local and want to try some new tech and you’re training for a fall race let me know and I can introduce you. Even if you’re not local and you want to learn more I can introduce you for future stuff as they roll it out.

Yeah, I don’t know what I’m doing for a fall target race. I think I’ll look for a Maine race in October or November. Maybe I’ll target MDI, I know Gary Allen, we’ve interviewed him at least twice, he’s the race director, I’ve always wanted to run that race and I need a Maine race.

I’m toying with doing a version of my own MarathonBQ plan to see if I can get some speed back. I’d have to modify it to have less volume, more cross training and more recovery days. I’d never survive it as written.

Not sue how Buddy is going to react now that we’re finishing up the 5 at 5. He may revolt. He’ll be waking me up at 5 in the morning and demanding to hit the trails! There are worse things.

Next week I’ve got a couple interviews lined up. I’ve got an Irish author who’s book I’m reading, sort of a literary mashup of Murikami and Born to Run. (Editorial note: When I throw out authors or movies or other factoids like that I usually provide a link to an explanation of just what the fine day I’m talking about in the show notes and the accompanying blog post)

I’m also talking with Tim the anxiety guy.

We’ll getone of those up for the next show or maybe I’ll pull Arnar from the smart garment company in to talk about robo-running.

I curated two old episodes up onto the members feed. Consider being a member, it keeps the lights on over here at the RunRunLive HQ. It’s fun for me to go back and listen to myself and what I was doing 5 or 6 years ago.

By the way, this episode is more than likely the 10 year anniversary of RunRunLive as a podcast. How about that? Here we are. Who would have thought it was possible? Over a million downloads later. Don’t be a stranger. Reach out and say ‘hi’. I’m entirely approachable but not so terribly interesting in person.

It’s funny how time moves around us and floats us and sometimes sinks us. Makes you think about what you are doing today and how it will change the flow of time for your tomorrows. One of my more philosophical answers that frustrates my business partners is that I don’t know what the outcome is, but I can tell you that I’m doing the things today that will put me in a position to change those outcomes.

And that’s the message for you. You can’t get off your raft that is being pushed along in the river of time. You can’t change the past. You can’t change the future. You can only choose what you do with your great personal fire, your gift today. And that can be enough to not only change your life but also change the lives of others.

It’s not set. You can do whatever you want. You just have to decide to do it.

Today I choose to talk to you. About running. And thinking. And experimenting with the fabric of the universe in my small dusty corner of it.

Hello my friends, and welcome to episode 4-367 th3e new summer, of the RunRunLive Podcast.

Here we are in June. Today we are going to chat with Matt who qualified for Boston recently. Not to be entirely self-promotional, but he used the Marathon BQ plan from my book, “Marathon BQ – how to qualify for Boston in 14 weeks with a full time job and a family” that recounts my own journey to a Boston qualifier.

It fascinates me to listen to these folks who have run the plan and qualified. It’s wonderful to me that it actually works for them. When you write down something like that there is always the worry that it has nothing to do with the plan. Somehow it is just you and your genetics or your work ethic or pure chance tipping those scales.

So – congratulations to Matt for putting in the work and reaping the rewards. Welcome to Boston.

This book continues to have legs, especially in April for obvious reasons, in both the e-book and audio book form. I’m thrilled to help people direct their energy and strength in a way that enables their goals. It’s very fulfilling.

I am going to look into spinning up a webinar course version of it where I would step through the chapters over 12 or 13 weeks in a live webinar. If that’s something you’re interested in let me know. I’ll try to put the registration up on qualifyforboston.com – which I own shortly.

Should be fun and I’ll learn something and help some folks. I’m not a webinar rookie. I do them for work many times. If you’ve listened to this for a awhile you might have heard me talking about giving presentations, or presentation skills or such. It’s one of the things I’ve worked on my entire career. I think I’m up to a B+ level now.

I gave a presentation this week in Boston this week at a startup conference. It was a room with maybe 100 souls in it. It was a blast! I had a 5-minute slot to give a pitch and demo. It used to be that I would be flop sweating having to stand up in front of a room but I love it now. If you prepare well and practice your craft you can turn that nervous energy into performance energy.

I met a bunch of cool startups too. At least one I’m going to get on the podcast. It’s a sensor garment that you wear and it tracks all your vitals and your haptic response. I’m definitely going to wear test that thing.

I’m 16 days into my 5 at 5 project. This project is where I get up at 5 AM and run 5 miles every day. I write a quick blog about it, daily, with a photo, if you want to follow along and see what’s rattling around in my brain. It’s over at my RunRunLive website.

It’s fun. I take Buddy the old wonder dog with me for the first 2 miles on the trails then I go back out for another loop to make up the 5. He seems to be handling it well. On the weekends I still get out but I freelance a bit, throwing in some longer runs with Ryan on Sunday. I’m doing as much trails as possible.

For Section one and section two today we are going to give you my Kettletown 50K race report. It was, of course, close to 20 minutes long, so I spilt it into two pieces and bookended the interview with it. Like a serial, right? Build some tension and anticipation, right?

I read too much. Really. When you read too much the words start to seep out of your brain like coffee through the seams of a carboard cup. They find their way out.

On with the show!

…

I’ll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported. What does that mean? It means you don’t have to listen to yet another Blue Apron or Hello Fresh ad. As a matter of fact, stop being lazy and go shop for your own food. We do have a membership option where you can become a member and as a special thank you, you will get access to member’s only audio.

I’ll also remind you that I have started raising money for team Hoyt for my 2017 Boston Marathon. I would appreciate any help you can give. The fundraiser is on Crowdrise (so I don’t have to touch any of the money) it goes straight to the Hoyts and supports acquiring equipment and supporting others who want to participate like the Hoyts do.

Voices of reason – the conversation

Matt Dunlap

Matt Dunlap Age 44 from St. Peters, Missouri. Husband and father of two. I completed the marathonBQ plan while working full time for the Boeing Co. in St. Louis. My background as an athlete: Never did run in school. I was a baseball kid. Started running in my 30s to lose weight picked up over the years. Started running long distance in 2016 and completed the BQ plan in May of 2017 (2nd marathon). Looking forward to my first trip to Bean Town and running the Boston Marathon in 2018! https://www.strava.com/athletes/19203695

Here’s the first email I got from Matt when he crashed in his first Marathon try…

Chris! Just finished listening to your Marathon BQ book today. I am SO motivated right now, and ready to start training, but unfortunately it's not time... yet... A little more background about myself: I'm 44 (as of yesterday) I've been a casual runner for over ten years. Ran my first race (10k) last 4th of July and been wanting "more" ever since... Ran a couple more 10k's this year, then decided to "try" a marathon which took place 8 days ago. My intention when I first committed to it was to just be able to say I did it. I had been listening to your podcast all the while (for over a year). I used a marathon plan that came with my runkeeper app. I had no intention of qualifying for Boston; it was never on my radar. But when I got several weeks into my training, and only had trouble hitting my workout goals when it was 90+ degrees out there, I started to think "maybe I could actually qualify for Boston?" I worked my butt off, never missed a workout for the last 10 weeks of that plan (plan goal was a 3:30 marathon). I knew that my gps was cutting a lot of my corners off as a ran my routes and wondered exactly how much better my "real" pace was than what I was reading on my phone (and/or watch). I told myself on race day, I would just settle into a comfortable effort level and see what happens... I am sending you three images that will basically tell you the story of the race. When you see the pics, from mile three and from mile 25, I'm sure you'll get the big picture, along with the image that shows my split times. In order for me to get a BQ, I had to finish in less than 3:15. I had it in my grasp but it slipped away in the last 10k. That's a bit of irony because for years I have always topped out at 6 miles or so on my workouts. But this last 10k of the marathon kicked my ass (last 3 miles were 9+ min/mi). Now I'm on a mission and I can't wait to get to the track! I just need to decide if I'm going to try a spring or a fall race next year. I love this book! -matt dunlap in St. Peters, MO

Finished 3:20:50 ish... more details to come. Everyone ran extra 4/10 mile because the first turn wasn't marked! Hopefully 4 minutes is enough to get into Boston.

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Matt did you stick to the plan note for note? Referring specifically to the three weekly 5 mile recovery runs

...

Matt N Kim Dunlap Yes, I followed it almost exactly as written. I did improvise some workouts though during the extra four weeks after the first race was cancelled. I lost about 8 lbs during the process too.

Matt N Kim Dunlap When I got into the 20 plus mile runs, I started around 8 min miles for 5 or 6 miles then gradually increased to my goal pace of 7:2x. One day I felt really good and kept going to 26.2 and averaged 7:33. That was three weeks before the race

…

Section two – More Kettletown

Outro

Ok my beautiful, fit and fast friends. Do you have the grit to get through a training plan, stay healthy and hit that staring line with gusto? Maybe, maybe not, but you have hung in there through the end of episode 4-367 of the RunRunLive podcast. Congratulations.

Did you see that lady from Oklahoma who won Comrades? Great article. She says she has 2 craft beers during every race. Not 3, not 1, 2. That’s enough to get her head and body in the zone. I wonder why that’s not considered doping?

I tagged a brief audio at the end of the show from Duane who is looking for people to go run an eclipse run with him. Once in a lifetime event.

Next week I’m going to have a chat with Julia who has a very interesting story of how life changed for her and she ended up finding herself in endurance running.

I also am in conversations with the anxiety guy, Tim, to do an interview about the interconnection between exercise and anxiety.

I’m going to keep curating older episodes onto the members feed as well.

Avocados. Do you like avocados? Avocados are interesting. They are native to the Americas. They are actually considered a berry with a single seed botanically. I like avocados. I have one in my salad most days. Healthy fat.

A couple interesting things. First, avocados should not exist. They evolved the way they are to be eaten whole by megafauna. Wooly mammoths, giant sloths and wooly rhinos. The megafauna would eat the avocado in one big gulp, swallow them and drop them with a bit of fertilizer some distance off. That was the avocado survival strategy. Doesn’t work well when all the megafauna are gone.

But along came humans and took a fancy to the poor avocado. We cultivated them and developed them into the current smaller seed, lots of meat form they currently have.

Did you know there is now an injury called ‘avocado hand’ that is so common among millennials that it is an official medical term? It’s when you cut your hand trying to open an avocado with a knife.

You can see how to open an avocado on YouTube. I use a modified approach where I cut it into 4 sections, then separate, then the skin just peels off like a ripe banana.

Avocados have a perfect ripeness you have to catch them at. You want them to be ripe but not mushy. When you buy them leave 1 or 2 out on the counter to ripen, leave the rest in the fridge. They ripen fast. If it gets ripe and you’re not ready to use it, stick it in the fridge.

Also, if you don’t want to eat the whole think you can put lemon juice on the exposed flesh of the leftovers to keep them from going brown in the fridge.

Hello my friends, and welcome to episode 4-366 of the RunRunLive Podcast.

366 Podcasts. If you’re new to the show that means you could listen to one of the old shows every day for a year, even a leap year, to catchup. And, assuming I haven’t thrown in the towel, you’ll still be 25 episodes behind.

It’s in our nature as endurance athletes to just keep moving forward. I do believe there is some innate value in that attribute of dogged persistence. What do you think? Are people too quick to ‘Pivot’ in these Silicon days?

Silicon days. Kinda sounds like Halcyon Days. Do you know what that means? You may have heard that phrase “Halcyon Days” used by people whose parents spent too much on a Liberal Arts Degree as referring to a happier time in the past.

It really means more of a calm time. It means a time where winds don’t blow. It’s from Greek mythology. 10 words or less. Alcyone was turned into a sea bird. Aeolus becalmed the waves for 7 days each year so she could make her nest. Ok that was 21 words and a number.

‘Silicon Days’ also makes me think of irony. Many classic SciFi stories are about humans being devastated by a silicon-based life form. From where I’m sitting, we may have manifested this already, right?

Enough rhyming games. What about endurance sports do we have to share today?

Today we talk to Nick about his new enterprise Impact Marathons. He Skype called me from Greece where he was staying with his uncle Nick, his cousins, Nick, Nick and Nicki. Sorry couldn’t resist.

Nick has an interesting story. He ditched a lucrative banking career at an early age and now sets up these experiential, socially impactful marathons in remote and beautiful places. I wanted to dive into why someone would do that. Why would you give away all your stuff, live out of a couple duffle bags and lead this nomadic lifestyle in pursuit of a big dream?

Sounds fulfilling, romantic and terrifying at the same time.

In section one I’ll address a question people have asked me about what to do when your next training cycle isn’t going to start for a couple weeks or months?

In section two I’ll talk about anxiety.

Speaking of the old shows, I’ve gone back in time and downloaded a few to listen to. Those first 80 shows are rough. I was on a schedule of pushing a show out a week and keeping it under an hour. The early audio is poor. I was using a cheap USB mic.

That being said there was a certain hopefulness and creativity to them that is fun to listen to. I’m going to start editing up some of them and curating them into the members feed. I know when I subscribe to a new podcast and see there are 300 shows, I don’t go back to the beginning. I may cherry pick by topic. I’m going to do some cherry picking of my own from the archives for my members.

Members, I truly appreciate you support. This has never been a commercial endeavor for me. It’s a passion project. My favorite thing is when I get a membership notice from someone I’ve never interacted with before and they say something like ‘I’ve been listening for years and you’ve really helped me with my running and my life’. That keeps me moving forward. Even when the days are not so Halcyon.

Teresa and I did end up driving down to CT for that trail race last weekend. I’ve got my notes down but haven’t had time to write them up. I will. I’ll probably push it as a separate piece because those race reports tend to go long.

Summary is, we had a good day. She ran the 20K like a champ and I ran the 50k like a stubborn old guy. Felt fine. No issues. My engine is good and my legs are good, I’m just a bit at loose ends with nothing to train for.

…

I finished reading a book called “Rebel without a crew” by Robert Rodriguez. He is a director. He made one of my favorite movies ‘Desperado’ with Antonio Banderas.

It’s a really good story. It is his journals from when he made his first movie El Mariachi for $7,000. He did it with no crew. It ended up making him the toast of Hollywood.

The basic story is that as a kid all he ever wanted to do was to make movies. So he made movies with his brothers and sisters as actors and videotape. He didn’t get good enough grades to get into film school, because, he spent all his time making movies.

He didn’t have any money so he went into one of those research hospitals to make $3,000 as a clinical trial lab rat. He used that money and figured out how to make a feature length movie as an experiment in Mexico for the Spanish video market. That was El Mariachi.

His plan was to make all his mistakes on this movie, sell it to the video distributers for a small profit and make a series of these as he learned that trade. Essentially throw-away movies. Then when he had enough experience he would approach the Hollywood crowd.

Long story, short, El Mariachi got noticed in Hollywood, starting a feeding frenzy that got him a deal at Columbia and won Sundance.

What’s great about this story is several things. First, he worked very hard over many years to put himself in a position to succeed. A splendid example of grit.

He also had the growth mindset going into this that he would make a movie, learn what he could in the process, not worry so much about failure and just do it. Take action. Learn from the results.

It’s a classic Horatio Alger, rags to riches, very American in nature.

On with the show!

…

I’ll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported. What does that mean? It means you don’t have to listen to yet another Blue Apron or Hello Fresh ad. As a matter of fact, stop being lazy and go shop for your own food. We do have a membership option where you can become a member and as a special thank you, you will get access to member’s only audio.

I’ll also remind you that I have started raising money for team Hoyt for my 2017 Boston Marathon. I would appreciate any help you can give. The fundraiser is on Crowdrise (so I don’t have to touch any of the money) it goes straight to the Hoyts and supports acquiring equipment and supporting others who want to participate like the Hoyts do.

Voices of reason – the conversation

The Impact Marathon Series are races for those who think differently, run for the good of others and dream they can leave an impact.

Founded in 2015 by Nick Kershaw and Matt Fenton, IMS organizes races in four developing locations: Nepal, Malawi, Colombia and Guatemala.

Like many more mainstream marathon companies IMS encourage runners to fundraise beforehand. However they ask runners to raise funds for one of the United Nations’ Global Goals directly relating to the location of their race – for example, charities focusing on Gender Equality in Nepal.

Runners then fly out to the race location a week before the marathon and complete two days of voluntary work directly relating to their selected Global Goal – in the above case, for example, providing support in a Nepalese burns unit. By doing so, participants get to see exactly how their fundraising helps and even get involved themselves via aid-work, thereby making a direct impact.

IMS aims to provide a synthesis between travel, running and voluntary work. By harnessing the power of running they believe runners can make a real difference to the developing world.

City-worker turned Social Entrepreneur with a penchant for travel, running and creating positive impact. He has spent the last living entirely nomadically, with just two bags for company. In this time he founded the Impact Marathon Series: a social business that harnesses the power of running to empower communities, runners and tackle the UN Global Goals.

The Impact Marathon dream combines travel, volunteering and running to bring about social change. In their first year they began races in Nepal, Colombia, Malawi, Guatemala & Kenya. They bring 120 people from all over the globe, representing a variety corporates, NGOs and running clubs to each race. They all live together in the Athletes' Village whilst heading out each day to work at the exact projects they have fundraised for...

They want to create a direct link to your fundraising so you can see, feel and understand the impact you have.

The best bit, on the final day of Impact Week, everyone joins together with the surrounding communities to run a tough trail race, with most stunning backdrops you can imagine!

Outro

Ok my long suffering friends that is it, you have dug water pipe ditches and built out-buildings for the marginalized 3rd-world poor through to the end of episode 4-366 of the RunRunLive Podcast, and then you ran a slow marathon to celebrate.

Yes I did run a 50K a couple weeks ago. Like I said, I have my notes, I just have to write it up. Other than being slow – took me 7 hours – it was a pleasant experience all around. I know, you’re all going to divorce me if I don’t start doing something interesting!

We are rolling into June this week and we’ve had the oddest spring weather up here in New England. It’s been 40’s and 50’s and overcast and rainy like Seattle or London for most of May. I’m not complaining. It’s great running weather. I can’t remember a spring where I was able to get so much use out of my old Boston Marathon running jacket. Not to run in, just to wear out.

Usually we go from 45 to 90 and it stays there. We don’t have these extended periods of cooler weather. It’s been great for my apple trees. They flowered and since it wasn’t hot they kept the flowers for more than a week. Now there are hundreds of little apples on them. I didn’t get my garden in until just this past weekend.

I’m starting a new project for June that I’m calling 5 at 5. I’m going to get up at 5 AM 30 Days and run 5 miles. The getting up early isn’t the hard part for me. It’s going to take a while or my body to get with the program of rolling out of bed and hitting the trails. My body would rather have coffee and oatmeal and a bathroom break.

I’m taking Buddy with me for the first 2 miles and I’ll try to take a photo every day in the same place to get a time lapse. With any luck we’ll get to see summer break like a wave over these few weeks.

This will help me stay in shape during June and will take less time out of my week than my normal training routine so I can get more stuff done.

Let me tell you a couple stories from the past couple weeks.

The first one is my mailbox story. This winter the snow plows took out my mail box. I wasn’t able to fix or replace it with the ground frozen and I propped it up with some bailing wire and a metal stake. Now that it’s warmer I needed to fix it because it frankly looked shoddy.

But before I could fix the mailbox I needed to fix my wheelbarrow. So, really this is my Mailbox/Wheelbarrow story.

I had a great big metal wheelbarrow that I had acquired many years ago. A few years back one of its staves broke. That is the proper term for a wheelbarrow handle, ‘stave’. Me, being the impatient man that I am bought a new wheelbarrow.

I soon discovered that the quality of wheelbarrows has plummeted in the intervening time and this new wheelbarrow was crap. Very low quality.

After I worked that new wheelbarrow into the ground I decided to fix the old one this year. I measured everything up and was able to procure the correct length staves on Amazon.

I had to spend a few hours getting the old rusted bolts out of the old wheelbarrow and buying the proper inventory of new nuts and bolts.

The new staves were the right length and of reasonably good quality. But the holes were in the wrong places. For the life of me I could not find my electric drill. And I did end up buying a new electric drill on Amazon. (I have since threatened my wife and children with painful and horrible death if they touch my new drill) Change that to the mailbox/wheelbarrow/drill story.

I was able to find the full set of wood bits that I needed for the drill to drill the holes in the staves so that I could reassemble the wheelbarrow with the new hardware.

And it’s a thing of beauty.

Then I went down to see if I couldn’t dig up the roots of the old mailbox so I could drop a new one in.

It turns out that whoever put that mailbox in wanted it to stay there. It was clasped on all sides by granite shards that I had to dig around and manually remove with my hands. You see I had to dig about surgically as to not destroy the well-established lilies, clematis and irises flourishing there.

I got all the pieces of the old mailbox out, measured it up. checked the official postal regulations online and headed off to one of the giant home improvement stores.

These mailbox posts come as one preassembled thing that you just stick in the ground so I thought I was close to the finish line.

However when I made my pilgrimage up and down the aisles and to where the post box posts were I was disappointed, ne thwarted. They had two posts. Both of such poor quality as to be embarrassing.

Instead I hiked the extra kilometer down to the lumber section and procured a couple 8 foot pressure treated 4 by 4’s. So, I guess this is the mail box/wheelbarrow/drill/post story…

Anyhow I was able to find my table saw and I crafted a beautiful post box post I set it nicely back into the ground with the granite chunks at the official height from the curb. I then gave the box itself a new coat of matt black paint.

I have to tell you, it’s a thing of beauty. There is nothing as life affirming to your suburban male then to be able to craft something with your own hands and have it actually end well.

So those of you who have significant others who roll their eyes when you ask them to do some simple task – remember in suburbia there is no such thing as a simple task, but there is a job well done.